>> Today is Warning: date(): It is not safe to rely on the system's timezone settings. You are *required* to use the date.timezone setting or the date_default_timezone_set() function. In case you used any of those methods and you are still getting this warning, you most likely misspelled the timezone identifier. We selected the timezone 'UTC' for now, but please set date.timezone to select your timezone. in /home/cairchic/public_html/header.php on line 331
Saturday, December 10, 2016

Instead of letting emotional photographs and one-sided stories get the best of us, the facts on the Palestinian-Israeli issue should be reexamined. Everyone has seen the footage and heard the stories about the sadness and disparity of the Jewish settlers who were evicted from the Gaza Strip, but one must not forget the reasons for the removal of the settlers in the first place.

For Charles Krauthammer, the author of “Summing up Gaza and the Big Picture”, to imply that while the Palestinian government has not done anything to help create a Palestinian state the Israeli government has been taking unprecedented action is a far stretch. It must be reiterated that the settlements in the Gaza are illegal in the first place within the occupied territories, so the action taken was only an appropriate small step and not anything to be placed on a pedestal. To say that Israelis have some sort of attachment to “every inch of soil they have reclaimed from sand to swamp” is implying that they have right to the land, in which there all sorts of international laws that factually say otherwise.

To say that the response of Palestinians on the pullout of the settlers has been solely a violent one is untrue. In this whole mess there have been very positive responses, including those who show support for the withdrawal of the settlers. The reliance on biased media coverage showing Palestinians as barbaric and violent is not a fair representation of the many Palestinians who are working to achieve a peaceful Palestinian state through activism, spreading knowledge, and other non-violent means.